Liars and the Dumb Stories They Tell

Sometimes the lies are not even clever, seductive, strategic, or the kind that could fool a mildly attentive housecat. They are … there, like discarded candy wrappers from someone else’s bad decisions, blowing around your life until you finally realise:

This was not love. This was coping.

The people I let close, I did not want or desire. They were not even people I admired. They were simply safe—or at least, safer than wanting someone I actually cared about.

That is the only trick the lies ever served: They let me stay small and numb. They let me believe that scraps were an appropriate meal. If you never reach for anything real, you never have to face the possibility of losing it. So I reached for the liars with the dumb stories, the ones whose attention did not matter, whose affection meant nothing, whose presence cost me nothing.

Because “nothing” felt predictable and deserved.

Because deep down, I thought that was all I was allowed to have. Here’s the twist the liars never see coming: When you finally wake up from that haze—when you finally realise that the stories were stupid, the attention was hollow, and the whole dynamic was built on your own sense of unworthiness—something changes. You stop craving the distraction. You stop volunteering for the hunger. You stop mistaking “safe” for “good.”

And the liars? They lose their power the second you remember that you deserve more than the versions of yourself you created to survive them.